Adopting EVs has been widely recognized as an efficient way to alleviate future climate change. Nonetheless, the large number of spent LiBs associated with EVs is becoming a huge concern from both environmental and energy perspectives. This review summarizes the three most popular LiB recycling technologies, the current LiB recycling market trend, and global recycling magnates’ industrial dynamics regarding this subject. We mainly focus on reviewing hydrometallurgical and direct recycling technologies to discuss the advancement of those recycling technologies and their future commercialization pathway.

The growing effect of CO2 and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on the extreme climate risks in the Western Cape, South Africa, calls for the need for better climate adaptation and emissions-reduction strategies to protect the region’s long-term social-economic benefits. This paper presents a comprehensive evaluation of changes in the future extreme events associated with drought and heatwave under three different greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions scenarios: Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 2.6, RCP 4.5, and RCP 8.5, from moderate to severe, respectively. Various diagnostic indices were used to determine how future heatwaves and drought will respond to each different RCP climate scenario in Western Cape based on Max Planck Institute-Earth System Model/REMO (MPI-ESM/REMO). The projected simulation results revealed that drought and heatwave extreme climate indices suggest strong relationships between future extreme climate risks and GHG emissions for Western Cape, South Africa. Anthropogenic activities and growing GHG emissions will lead to severer extreme climate stress in terms of drought and the duration, frequency, and magnitude of heatwave stresses. As a result, we believe that reducing the GHG emissions to alleviate future extreme climate stress becomes a practical solution to protect the local’s socio-economic system and further maintain the region’s economic prosperity.

The growing impact of CO₂ and other greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions on the socio-climate system in the Western Cape, South Africa, urgently calls for the need for better climate adaptation and emissions-reduction strategies. While the consensus has been that there is a strong correlation between CO₂ emissions and the global climate system, few studies on climate change in the Western Cape have quantified the impact of climate change on local climate metrics such as precipitation and evaporation under different future climate scenarios. The present study investigates three different CO₂ emissions scenarios: Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 2.6, RCP 4.5, and RCP 8.5, from moderate to severe, respectively. Specifically, we used climate metrics including precipitation, daily mean and maximum near-surface air temperature, and evaporation to evaluate the future climate in Western Cape under each different RCP climate scenario. The projected simulation results reveal that temperature-related metrics are more sensitive to CO₂ emissions than water-related metrics. Districts closer to the south coast are more resilient to severer GHG emissions scenarios compared to inland areas regarding temperature and rainfall; however, coastal regions are more likely to suffer from severe droughts such as the “Day-Zero” water crisis. As a result, a robust drying signal across the Western Cape region is likely to be seen in the second half of the 21st century, especially under the scenario of RCP 8.5 (business as usual) without efficient emissions reduction policies.

Investigating the effects of spatial scales on the uncertainty and sensitivity analysis of the social vulnerability index (SoVI) model output is critical, especially for spatial scales finer than the census block group or census block. This study applied the intelligent dasymetric mapping approach to spatially disaggregate the census tract scale SoVI model into a 300‐m grids resolution SoVI map in Davidson County, Nashville. Then, uncertainty analysis and variance‐based global sensitivity analysis were conducted on two scales of SoVI models: (a) census tract scale; (b) 300‐m grids scale. Uncertainty analysis results indicate that the SoVI model has better confidence in identifying places with a higher socially vulnerable status, no matter the spatial scales in which the SoVI is constructed. However, the spatial scale of SoVI does affect the sensitivity analysis results. The sensitivity analysis suggests that for census tract scale SoVI, the indicator transformation and weighting scheme are the two major uncertainty contributors in the SoVI index modeling stages. While for finer spatial scales like the 300‐m grid's resolution, the weighting scheme becomes the uttermost dominant uncertainty contributor, absorbing uncertainty contributions from indicator transformation.

The water-energy-food (WEF) nexus has emerged as a critical research interest to support integrated resource planning, management, and security. For this reason, many tools have been developed recently to evaluate the WEF nexus security and monitor progress toward the WEF-related sustainable development goals. Among these, calculating the WEF composite index model is critical since it can provide a quantitative approach to demonstrate the WEF nexus security status. However, the current WEF nexus index model framework needs to include the incorporation of governance indicators, neglecting the importance of governance in the WEF nexus framework. Thus, this article develops a new WEF nexus composite index model that incorporates governance indicators in each subpillar. The principal component analysis (PCA) is adopted to reduce the variables’ collinearity and the model’s dimensionality. A quasi-Monte Carlo-based uncertainty and global sensitivity analysis are applied to the index model to assess its effectiveness. Finally, the new WEF index model is applied to the 16 South African Development Community (SADC) countries as a case study. A critical synergy effect within the WEF nexus framework is identified that nations with better WEF governance ability tend to perform better in improving the WEF accessibility capability, suggesting the importance of governance in the WEF nexus security framework.